Book Review

King Death: the Black Death and its Aftermath
in Late Medieval England

Reviewed by: Dr. Phillip Schofield (Cambridge Group for the History of Population and Social Structure)

The study of the Black Death has undergone something of a renaissance
in recent years. A flurry of articles (including J. Hatcher, 'England
in the aftermath of the Black Death', Past and Present, 144
(1994)), a selection of sources (R. Horrox, The Black Death
(1994)) and two syntheses (this one and M. Ormrod and P. Lindley,
eds., The Black Death in England (1996)) have dealt specifically
with late medieval plague. Other studies have taken plague as a
focus or point of departure, for example, L.R. Poos, A Rural
Society after the Black Death: Essex 1350-1525 (1991). This
interest stands in contrast, as Hatcher points out, to the view
of the Black Death taken by historians at mid century, and it may
be that the social and economic history of late medieval English
society has emerged from the shadow of historians such as Postan
and Levett, where the Black Death was seen as a catalyst, not a
prime mover. Colin Platt's King Death: the Black Death and its
Aftermath in Late Medieval England is a work of synthesis which
continues this trend. Written in a fairly chatty style (phrases
such as 'Mickey Mouse numbers' and 'rich old ladies' abound), with
a liberal sprinkling of modern marketing-speak ('shopping blight',
'customer base' and 'market spread', for example), it is a personal
tour through a great deal of the recent secondary literature, largely
generated by historians of town and countryside; the book also offers
a brief survey of post-plague art and architecture.

Beginning with Bridbury's well-known characterisation of the Black
Death as 'more purgative than toxic', Platt treats his introductory
chapter as an opportunity to run through much familiar material,
including a quotation from the most obvious continental source,
Boccaccio's Decameron. From late fourteenth-century England,
Knighton's chronicle is also quoted. as is the chronicle of Meaux,
before Platt turns to examine data on mortality compiled by Hatcher
and Harvey from the monastic communities of Canterbury and Westminster
respectively. Poos's work on tithing data is also briefly considered
and other local studies which touch on Black Death mortality are
tapped in the search for some general percentage of plague deaths.
Platt, as anyone who attempts a synthesis of this kind, is at the
mercy of the historians whose work he uses. Important work by Razi
on Halesowen and by Lock on Walsham-le-Willows is quoted and the
figures given there are accepted, seemingly without reservation.
However the authors of both of these studies have assumed that the
manor court rolls, upon which their research is based, offer records
of total populations which they may well not; further, both Razi
and Lock attempt to break down the tenant population according to
age and produce very interesting but highly speculative results.
Using the Walsham-le-Willows data, Platt is happy to report that
90 per cent of the elderly in the village died in 1349, whilst the
plague spared most of those in their twenties (14 per cent mortality)
and thirties (20 per cent mortality). Thus, he explains, the structure
of landholding could happily recover from the removal of what was,
essentially, surplus. The swift recovery which followed the first
plague outbreak is, as he notes, well-attested and the seemingly
eager acceptance of new opportunities by the offspring and lateral
kin of the deceased is familiar. This is described in particular
detail by Razi for Halesowen. But the interesting, and possibly
problematic, thing about the Halesowen and Walsham-le-Willows data
is that the age structure of mortality, if such it is, runs counter
to much that has been written on age-specific plague mortality in
later periods. The cautionary note which both historians include
with their results has been largely ignored by Platt and as a consequence
the general reader will be left with an unrealistic expectation
of what the demographic study of manorial court rolls can achieve.
More demographic research of recent years is also presented as cut
and dried (the manor of Coltishall in Cambridgeshire, recently studied
by Bruce Campbell, is described as 'small but representative...of
the region' (p. 11)) when, in actual fact, most of the information
is standing in the field, still waiting for the scythe.

This uncritical approach is most evident in Platt's description
of household formation and age at marriage in rural communities,
where he examines the work of those historians who have recently
attempted to show that low fertility rather than high mortality
explains the population doldrums in which late medieval England
fell becalmed. Platt embraces the fertility model of late medieval
population stagnation wholeheartedly, and mortality, which, of course,
cannot be denied a major role in initial outbreaks, is subsequently
relegated to a bit-part. Rural communities were 'relatively immune
from plague', writes Platt (p. 34), and, having raised the problem
of why population failed to recover in the century and a half after
the arrival of plague, he then proceeds to describe recent research,
particularly that by Poos on rural Essex, which has promoted the
thesis of a shift to late marriage and the nuclear family subsequent
to 1348/9.

There are a number of problems here which Platt does not address.
Firstly, it is far from inconceivable that plague did continue to
have an effect on rural populations, even in the fifteenth century.
Jim Bolton, in his own recent overview of the social and economic
impact of the Black Death, which includes a brief but valuable discussion
of some of the epidemiological literature, seems to suggests that
plague had become enzootic in late medieval England (J. Bolton,
'"The world upside down": plague as an agent of economic
and social change', in Ormrod and Lindley, eds., The Black Death
in England, p. 27); Robert Gottfried's well-known discussion
of fifteenth-century plague, although open to question, also argues
that plague, travelling along the routes of commercialised late
medieval England, continued to have an impact in the East Anglian
countryside (R. S. Gottfried, Epidemic Disease in Fifteenth-Century
England: the Medical Response and the Demographic Consequences
(1978)). A second point which can be made here concerns family structure.
Platt describes two very distinct periods in the history of medieval
rural household formation: a pre-plague period when rural families
lived in extended households; and a post-plague period when these
complicated structures were replaced by nuclear families as individuals
made new choices about household formation. However, in terms of
what is known about household formation systems, both past and present,
even where extended families are seen as an optimum, the majority
of household structures at any one time are likely to be simple
rather than complex. This point offers a change of emphasis rather
than of content in Platt's discussion but it is not where the real
problem lies. The almost insurmountable problem which any discussant
of rural, and, in particular, peasant, family structure faces for
this period is that there is very little evidence which can shed
light on peasant family and/or household forms at all: Platt, noting
that large households could still, exceptionally, be found in the
century after the Black Death, has to turn to the nobility for an
example (p. 37, referring to the 23 children of Richard de Neville,
earl of Westmoreland). The thirteenth-century serflists, discussed
by Hallam and, latterly, by Smith, are, prior to the 1377 and 1381
poll-taxes, the only nominative listings which can offer detailed
insights into peasant family structures. Studies of manorial court
rolls have, and may still, shed light on this area as may archaeology
but, at present, there is not the evidence to justify the categorical
argument which Platt propounds. In fact, it is not inconceivable
that population decline in the mid to late fourteenth century could,
in certain cases, have generated complex households as sons, with
the added leverage of the threat of mobility, hastened the retirements
of their parents; although this would seem, given late medieval
evidence on mobility and the widespread availability of land, an
unlikely scenario, the reality is, that for a good deal of the English
population, we simply do not know. Further, although there is evidence
for life-cycle service in late medieval England, this still needs
testing outside the regions, notably Yorkshire and Essex, in which
it has so far been identified. Mark Bailey's combative and important
article, published earlier this year in Economic History Review,
and after the appearance of King Death, raises a number of
questions about the overall validity of the demographic observations
made by Poos and Goldberg: whether it provokes a response remains
to be seen but Professor Platt's observations should certainly be
read with Bailey's caveats in mind.

Extended attention has been given to the demographic discussion
of plague's impact for the reason, already given, that this is an
area of unresolved debate and, consequently, any attempt at an overview
must be of interest. It is, however, not the only area of recent
historical debate to which Professor Platt turns his attention;
the related question of the extent of the plague's impact on the
late medieval economy is also considered. In a chapter entitled
'shrunken towns', Platt reviews a number of the recent studies which
have added their separate and often disharmonious voices to the
'urban decay' debate. Towns such as Wells, Boston and Winchester
are seen as, to a greater or lesser extent, 'genuine victims' of
plague-induced population decline; in contrast, the decline of Great
Yarmouth, for example, cannot be so easily explained in terms of
excessive mortality. However, Platt is keen to promote the demographic
aspect of urban decay and concludes this chapter by suggesting that
it was the failure of the countryside in the late middle ages to
boost urban populations by migration that helps explain urban decay
in this period. This is by way of introduction to his discussion
of the demographic developments in villages, which has been considered
above. By extension, Platt suggests that fertility and not mortality
also explains the problems faced by towns in the late fourteenth
and fifteenth centuries.

In subsequent chapters, Platt presents an analysis of the plague-related
experience of the different components of late medieval society:
nobility, gentry and monks and nuns. In discussing the fortunes
of the nobility in the later middle ages, Platt examines the experience
of lay landlords, offering examples from the Stafford and Arundel
estates, amongst others. The leasing of the demesnes is described
here before Platt offers some thoughts on why English noble families
did not generally replicate the success of the Greys into the sixteenth
century. Flawed succession, which opened the door to long-lived
widows, seems to be the final verdict and Platt, in a style that
is likely to prove provocative, wishes the dowagers ill. His approach
stands in contrast to J. M. W. Bean's brief discussion of widow's
dower in volume III of Agrarian History of England and Wales,
where he suggests that 'landowners showed no concern about this
aspect of feudal land law'. 'Biology - more than war, economic recession
or the everlasting folly of politicians' also, according to Platt,
explains the severe fluctuations in the fortunes of individual families
of poorer knights and gentry in this period. Well-placed to take
advantage of the failures of their social superiors, opportunity
knocked in the form of political office and land, available through
marriage. In order to preserve their estates, the gentry developed
legal devices intended to ensure male succession and, increasingly,
came to restrict rights of widow's dower. However, as Platt acknowledges,
actual attempts to restrict dower were few and tardy, which seems
to return us to Bean's comment, quoted earlier.

The decline, often severe, in the numbers of monks and nuns is
also described by Platt. The ultimate failure of religious communities,
done to death in the first half of the sixteenth century, was preceded
by some earlier demises, the root cause of which may have pre-dated
the Black Death but ends nonetheless that may have been hastened
by the arrival of plague. A fall in numbers was also accompanied,
eventually, by a loss of income as landed estates failed to make
the returns which they had in earlier decades. Having described
the increase in the monks' standard of living in the late fourteenth
and fifteenth centuries, Platt suggests that the monastic existence
became more lethargic and corrupt subsequent to plague's arrival.
Quoting, in conclusion, Erasmus, he hints that the Reformation gained
impetus from this.

Two chapters touch on the effect of plague on piety (chapter 7:
'Like people, like priest') and on revolt (chapter 8: 'Protest and
resolution'). In the first of these Platt begins with a discussion
of the mortality amongst the clergy, which seems to have been significantly
higher than that of the lay population, before proceeding to examine
the spiritual impact of the plague and, in particular, the growing
importance of chantries. In concluding the chapter he suggests that
a scarcity of priests subsequent to 1349 had turned into an excess
by the early sixteenth century which, in turn, had led to their
alienation by a society which increasingly saw clerics as preoccupied
with secular advancement. Platt's interpretation of the fluctuation
of ordinations contrasts quite markedly with Christopher Harper-Bill's
recent overview of English religion after the Black Death, where
the latter argues that the beginning of the decline in numbers of
ordinations pre-dates the arrival of plague and that the sustained
level of ordinations in the first decades after 1348/9 was a mark
of genuine religious fervour.

The chapter on protest deals more with developments in the criminal
legal machinery after the Black Death rather than simply rehearsing
again the events of 1381. Touching upon seigneurial reaction in
the wake of plague and peasant, particularly villein, resistance
to this, Professor Platt proceeds to discuss some of the recent
literature describing late medieval developments in the common law
and in office-holding. The growing use of arbitration is also described
and set within the context of the fifteenth century and the violence
of the nobility. The message with which Platt leaves us is that
legal cards are not dealt even-handedly and it is the dealers who
tend to win; he recognises that if this is true for the post-Black
Death period it removes any claim of novelty for that time, at least
in terms of justice. In his concluding chapter Platt returns to
the theme of revolt, speculating that the plague helped to spare
England from rebellion. He sees plague in England as a defining
moment which liberated great hordes of people (to a greater degree
than any revolution could) but there is a danger here, which Platt
acknowledges, of misrepresenting pre-plague England: the mobility,
the security, the tolerated level of social protest which Platt
describes for post-plague society does not, in all respects, stand
in sharp and positive contrast to what went before. Poos, for example,
is keen to suggest, in a contentious thesis, that the population
of Essex was highly mobile even before 1348/9 (Poos, Rural Society);
further, the decline of serfdom also saw the disappearance of certain
customary devices, such as widow's dower, that had offered a measure
of protection to at least some sections of peasant society; finally,
what we know of ecclesiastical courts from the late thirteenth and
early fourteenth century (admittedly very little) suggests that
the public shaming of cuckolds and similar expressions of rule and
misrule enjoyed a prominence in rural society which does not stand
in contrast to what followed. None of which is to say that the Black
Death did not have extraordinary and far-reaching effects on English
society which, obviously, it did; instead, some greying of the distinctions
is called for. For instance, one very real good which the Black
Death and the Peasants' Revolt did combine to bring to an end was
excessive taxation of the poorer elements of society. If, however,
society's burden was being shifted in this way, other weights were
being added and we should note that Harper-Bill, following Miri
Rubin, suggests that it was the plague which first threw the 'sturdy
beggar' on to the English social stage (C. Harper- Bill, 'The English
Church and English religion after the Black Death', in Ormrod and
Lindley, eds., The Black Death in England, p. 116). King
Death is not, however, just an attempt at a synthesis of recent
work and there is much in the book that is generated by Professor
Platt's particular research interests and expertise. Archaeological
evidence is usefully integrated into the discussion on a number
of occasions and Platt describes the plague's effect on art and
architecture in the penultimate chapter. The late medieval culture
of death is reviewed here and a number of examples of memento
mori given. This chapter is well-supported by photographs and
illustrations; carefully chosen and well-integrated with the text,
these are amongst the highlights of the book in general (an aerial
photograph of Ingarsby Grange in the snow, in the chapter entitled
'Of monks and nuns', is particularly appealing) and are at their
most impressive here.

In a concluding chapter, sections of which have already been discussed,
it is suggested that historians have been forced into tunnel vision
by the periodisation of the subject. With this in mind, Professor
Platt attempts to assess the plague's overall impact but still,
despite his warning to avoid a too strict division of history, encourages
us to see the Black Death as a point of crisis from which English
society made real recovery. Alongside his concluding view that plague
achieved what no English revolution could, the changing perception
of death is also considered and a brief return is made to discussion
of the art of dying. We are told that the legend of The three
living and the three dead lost its levity after the Black Death;
if it was a great joke beforehand then the mid fourteenth century
marks a very real watershed indeed.